Search

What can we expect from a mission trip?

“I know a guy who took a short-term trip to Senegal. He is now a high school math teacher in Seattle. Though he never went back overseas after that summer trip, he is different.

“He prays for the world and if he hears any news about that part of Africa, he listens a little more closely. If he meets someone from anywhere in West Africa, he strikes up a conversation.”

Writing for Campus Ministry Today, The Traveling Team’s Todd Ahrend suggests a number of ways to improve the impact of our mission teams, including five outcomes to shoot for in the lives of those who go:

Considering long-term service

Being informed about the needs of the global Church and the unreached

Gaining insights from poverty, pain, and injustice

Change in lifestyle back home

Development of personal ministry

“What if we started off designing our trips with these outcomes in mind?” asks Ahrend. “What if we worked with our host teams overseas not only to further their mission, but also to cultivate these goals?”

Ahrend’s article reminds us that while much of the pre-field training offered for long-term missionaries is shaped by desired competencies and outcomes, short-term mission team training and debriefing may fall short in these areas. A Shift in Short Term Missions includes analysis, action points, resource links, and reflection questions you may find helpful in maximizing mission teams.

Standard #6: Appropriate Training. An excellent short-term mission prepares and equips all participants for the mutually designed outreach, and is expressed by biblical, appropriate, and timely training, on-going training and equipping (pre-field, on-field, post-field), and qualified trainers.

Missio Nexus Meetings

Each fall, as part of the Standards of Excellence in Short-term Mission (SOE), we have the privilege of planning the short-term mission track for the national mission leaders’ conference hosted by Missio Nexus. Networking with old ministry friends and meeting new short-term mission leaders always rejuvenates me.

This year about 800 mission leaders attended the conference, discussing and learning more about current trends in missions ranging from strategies to nonprofit tax changes. Have you noticed that nothing gets simpler?! It always seems to get more complicated!

Navigating a Merger

After the Missio Nexus meetings, other SOE board members and I met for two days in Dallas. You may remember that SOE recently merged with Delta Ministries, a ministry with a long history of effective mission teams and training.

A merger is no simple thing. It is one thing to merge on paper, and another to actually integrate the pieces. We made great progress in 2017 and 2018 should take us another large step forward in welding the two strong agencies into one. We are already seeing more growth and impact than we expected.

A Different Kind of Chaos

My wife and I recently visited our son and family in Nepal for a couple weeks. It was actually my first trip to Asia. I had to chuckle about the traffic on the streets. I had expected noise and chaos, and it was chaotic. But it was chaotic in a different way. The buses, trucks, tractors, taxis, and motorcycles by the hundreds, plus people and water buffalo, went every which way. But they weren’t honking their horns or threatening to run over each other. If you’re a pedestrian, drivers will actually go around you!

Our son put it all into perspective when he compared it to our crowded malls at Christmas time. People everywhere with arms loaded, going every which way, and sometimes pushing a stroller. Yet they (almost) never run into each other. That is because every few seconds they adjust their direction and speed. And you don’t even really think about it. Nepal’s drivers and water buffalo were doing the sam

e thing, calmly and rather quietly, even with only the slimmest clearance between them.

How grateful I am for the Lord’s presence and the partnership of others when life and ministry get complicated!

Thanks for lifting us up. We appreciate your partnership in the gospel.

Agency Partners

During October we saw a ten-percent increase in the number of mission agencies posting trips on ShortTermMissions.com! This results from emails from our new marketing coordinator and a lot of activity from our social media specialist.

Behind the Scenes

A new design and layout for the ShortTermMissions.com user control panel has been developed; it really looks sharp and attractive. We appreciate the graphic design skills of our programmer in Argentina. Keep praying that the new programming and the integration with the new site goes smoothly and quickly.

Help Needed

Would you ask God to connect us with a person with considerable missions background and committed to helping others get involved in missions who will help us rethink the layout for AskaMissionary.com? Traffic increases every year, but we see a slow decrease in terms of how deep visitors go within the site. We need to integrate graphics into the design and figure out the next layer of helps to provide.